Creative education unlocks rural children’s curiosity and potential

One SA NPO is helping to make thousands of rural children, with little or no access to technology, future-fit through gaming and coding.

The Good Work Foundation (GWF), which operates mainly in rural Mpumalanga and the Free State, is working to rekindle a sense of childhood wonder that it says conventional education tends to extinguish by tapping into children’s sense of curiosity and creativity.

According to the foundation, of 100 children that start school in SA, about 60 will reach their final year, 37 will matriculate, and only 12 will access university. Almost none will be adequately equipped to participate in the fourth industrial revolution.

Its Open Learning Academy, which caters mainly for children living around the Kruger National Park, focuses on building English, mathematics and digital literacy skills, as well as life skills, reaching about 11,000 rural pupils a month.

The classes held at schools and at GWF’s digital learning campuses do not replace conventional classroom learning, but rather complement it in collaboration with the schools.

“The intention is to provide access to learning through the use of digital tools, and to ignite a passion for learning,” said Cath Holm, Open Learning Academy’s programme manager.

“These children have no access to technology in their schools, but when they come to one of our digital learning campuses they have the opportunity to discover different digital apps, tools and games that help them to learn.

“The high cost of data is a huge barrier to learning in these rural communities,” Holm said.

A recent report by Stats SA, titled “Covid-19 and barriers to participation in education in SA”, found that in 2020, at the start of the pandemic, remote learning programmes did not guarantee that the children participated in the instruction.

These children have no access to technology in their schools, but when they come to one of our digital learning campuses, they have the opportunity to discover different digital apps, tools and games that help them to learn.

—  Cath Holm, Open Learning Academy

“An assessment of households’ readiness for remote learning in 2020 revealed a disparity in access to various resources necessary to partake in remote learning. Most households did not have assets at home that would allow them to learn remotely via digital tools,” the Stats SA report said.

The report found that in 2020 only close to 7% of households with individuals aged five to 24 had access to the internet at home while most households accessed the internet via smartphones.

“Furthermore, metropolitan households have greater connectivity from home compared to their rural counterparts.”

The report found poor households that could not afford computers and wifi internet access would most likely to be at a disadvantage, and those from impoverished backgrounds have inevitably fallen behind.

It states that poor households were most vulnerable to learning loss.

Mindful of the challenges facing rural households when it comes to connectivity and technology, GWF has set out to nurture children within the context of 21st-century learning.

“The focus has been on grade fours to date, but GWF is expanding its reach to grade three pupils to help them navigate the tricky transition from the foundation phase to the intermediate phase of schooling.”

Holm said grades five to seven also get the benefit of experiential “immersion” training, visiting game reserves to learn about anti-rhino poaching efforts and wildlife conservation.

“The beauty of the flexible, interactive open learning approach is the amount of open-source educational tools available that anyone can access for free, from coding and English apps to Lego-building manuals and data-free educational sites.

“These online resources are best used in a blended environment that fuses physical and digital learning,” Holm said.

She said many children have improved their academic performance.

“You can see their increased engagement in the classroom. Instead of rote learning, our facilitators encourage collaboration, discussion, innovation and critical and creative thinking.”

GWF CEO Kate Groch said it is about unlocking the curiosity and excitement of learning by giving the agency of learning back to the child.

“Humans are, by nature, wired to learn, and open learning gives these children the opportunity to turn on that curiosity again, stoke the fire and never put the lid on it again.

“Innovation often comes from not having something. If you grow up without access to water, you’ll be motivated to do something about it. These children, if given proper access and tools, will grow up to solve their communities’ problems. We need to tap into these brains,” Groch said.

“If you look at a protractor, if an angle is changed by one degree, it alters the trajectory completely. It’s like that with children — small changes early on can completely alter their course in life. We try to do that through wonder-filled learning. It’s amazing seeing the children standing taller, excited to learn.”